Is this goodbye for King Nidge?

Last Sunday night saw more than 1 million people across the country tune into RTE’s Love/Hate season 5 finale.

The finale was a bit like the Red Wedding episode of Game Of Thrones as no one was safe. First we saw poor Janet (Janeh) meet her maker as Terence told Nidge that the “rats” he kept on about needed to be taken care of. However, Nidge didn’t seem to feel too guilty as his shiny new King Nidge runners from Trish soon took his mind off things.

Then Siobhan, ever the rat, told Detective Moynihan about Git’s death. Well, at least her own embellished version of what happened. Moynihan got mad and went from good cop to bad cop as we saw him pull over Nidge on the side of the road and chew up his tax disc. Sound.

Meanwhile, Fran the man was spotted by Nadine who promptly ratted him out to the guards and it wasn’t long before he was back in the ‘Joy. Things went rapidly downhill for Fran from here and let’s just say he’ll be walking like John Wayne for a while, if he ever walks again.

The final scenes of the finale all happened very fast. Siobhan called over to Trish for a cuppa where she admitted to a devastated Trish that Nidge was behind Janet’s death all along. Sneakily, we also saw Siobhan plant her rapist’s finger bone in the bathroom in a bid to frame her evil uncle.

As she left, Siobhan met Nidge outside where she finally flew off her rocket and confronted him about the beating that left Tommy in a coma. She then revealed that she was the rat all along and that she had framed him for Git’s murder and that the Gardaí were on their way.

Needless to say uncle Nidgey got mad, real mad, but before all hell broke loose between the two who arrives only Patrick in a Ford Transit with all guns blazing. He takes down Siobhan as he aims for Nidge and almost gets little Warren (Wardin) too as he chases Nidge around the back of the house.

With only one wear out of his new runners, a bullet to the chest sends Nidge to the ground and with one last look at his son, a second shot is fired into his chest as Patrick finally gets his revenge.

And that was it, the nation’s jaws all dropped to the floor.

So what’s next for Love/Hate?

Mary Murray has said she knew her character Janet’s demise was ‘imminent’, but was delighted she made it to the last episode of the season.

Tom Vaughan Lawlor, who played Nidge, looks set for bigger and brighter things as he released a statement saying; “The last five years working on Love/Hate have been an incredible and unforgettable journey for me…I’m hugely grateful to the show and to its fans and I am equally looking forward to the new challenges ahead for me both on screen and stage”.

Johnny Ward, who played Paulie, will “swap the guns for tights” as he is to take on the lead role of Peter Pan in this Christmas’s panto in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.

However, there is a tiny glimmer of hope for Love/Hate fans as when the Head of drama at RTÉ, Jane Gogan, was asked on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland if this is the end of Love/hate she simply stated; “That decision is yet to be made” before adding “It’s a very big world and it can extend far beyond what we’ve seen so far…it can go in all sorts of directions”.

All we can do is cross our fingers and hope Stuart Carolan hears the cry of the people for more. Or you never know, Tommy could wake up and it could all just have been a bad dream.

But for now, to deal with our Love/Hate withdrawal symptoms, what can we be tuning into on TV?

Unfortunately we have to wait till April for Game of Thrones to return to our screens, however the new series of The Big Bang Theory is on RTE2 every Wednesday at 7pm, The Flash has only started on Sky1, and the new season of House Of Cards is out on Netflix in February. A new series, Fortitude, is starting on Sky Atlantic in January, and both The Walking Dead season 5 and Greys Anatomy Season 11 will also be back on RTE in the near future.

On top of all this we have plenty of Christmas flicks to look forward to in the coming weeks too.